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Thursday, March 3, 2016

New Zealand Trip Recap : Part 2

If you're new here, or haven't tuned in for a while, the BF and I just
got back from a 10 day (counting travel) // 7 night trip to New Zealand. This is part two
of my trip recap, part one here. Stay tuned as I'll be back with part 3 soon Monday (& part 4 if necessary -- so many pictures!).
As well as some tips on how to not strangle your significant other while
traveling together (next Thursday).

I've listed our meals, anything with a + I would recommend.

{day three}

We got up early & packed our shit. One of us had an easier time with that than the other. Also the one of us who is more orderly in general. And it's not me. How my whole bag unpacked itself in 2 days is beyond me. Ate a $25 per person CONTINENTAL hotel breakfast (that was pretty much the only thing we fought about the whole trip.) & caught the bus to the airport to pick up our rental car.

THIRTY FIVE minutes of waiting later, & it was our turn in line. We had to say, "Excuse me" pretty much every other sentence as the rental lady whispered at us. Finally we just handed over our driver's license's & a credit card, signed a bunch of stuff & hoped we would be okay, we had 4 -5 hours to drive to make it to Mt. Cook.

| side note | I think of myself as having great hearing, and the BF will confirm. He can't get away with saying anything under his breath, or even in the other room. I hear it all. But pretty much everyone we came across in NZ was so soft spoken I had no chance of understanding them. Couple that with an accent & different colloquialisms & I felt like I didn't have a clue what was going on around me.

| other side note | Someone please explain to me why my PA drivers license allows me to operate a vehicle in NZ (on the other side of the road!), but I need my passport to prove I'm old enough to drink or be in a casino.

Let me tell you. Hopping in the left side of the car & having no steering wheel in front of you is super strange. As is having your turn signal on the right side of the steering wheel & the wipers on the other. Let's just say we turned the wipers on way more than we meant to.

We headed towards Mt. Cook & the good news is, it's very hard to get lost in NZ, there is honestly only one road to get to where you're going 99% of the time. The drive was BEAUTIFUL. We passed Lake Tekapo & Lake Pukaki, both with a blue color I just couldn't believe.

Lake Pukaki

We could see Mt. Cook continually getting closer in the distance & it was pretty much everything I could do to not make us stop at every pull-off to take a picture pretty much identical to this...

We arrived at 229PM for our 230 tour. I dropped the BF off to run in & make everyone wait while I parked the car. An Argo tour at Mt. Cook came included in our Groupon package, but I would have paid for it regardless. This thing was neat & we spent about 30 minutes cruising up the mountain side to get a better look at the Tasman Glacier, whose melt eventually forms Lake Pukaki.

Mt. Cook

While the top is covered with dirt & rock, the edge of the murky lake down below is actually the glacier.

BF & I with said Argo

All in all we spent about 90 minutes walking // Argo-ing around before returning to the start. We still had a 4+ hour drive to make it to our hotel in Queenstown that night, so we took a quick 20 minute side hike to get a different mountain view & then scurried on back to our car.

The drive was ~4 hours & we were racing the sunset to arrive before dark, but the drive was absolutely beautiful & we took more than a few blurry car shots out the windows.

We had intentions of stopping for dinner somewhere quick along the way, but NZ isn't like the States where you can just pop off any exit & have your pick of fast food. So, we scarfed some of our in-car provisions & arrived to Queenstown ravenous. Unfortunately our dinner was terrible. Like, not even the booze was good. & seriously overpriced. We went in search of ice cream, got ourselves all turned around & just decided to head to bed instead.

breakfast : At the hotel

lunch : PBJ

dinner : Surreal, Queenstown

AND, since I feel like this is already super wordy. I'll stop here. I'll be back with my recap of our days in Queenstown, my favorite part of the trip, on Monday, so be sure to stop back!

29 comments:

I have nearly identical pictures of those lakes. :) The blue color is so gorgeous in person! We went to Mt Cook & did a rainy hike but never saw it because of the rain & fog. Looks gorgeous! Oh, and your recap reminds me of something I completely forgot--the food was awful! Like, every meal was awful. We had no idea how they could mess up simple things like breakfast. We had a single good meal on the trip at an Indian restaurant.

UGH. I hate that the food was awful, but I guess I'm glad we're not crazy. I didn't understand how a whole country could have bad food. So I half wondered if we somehow just picked ALL terrible places. I guess not!

haha can't wait for the strangle your significant other while traveling together tips :)i have never ever ever heard a soft spoken kiwi in my life! that is hilarious. they are super loud normally. but yeah their accent is a bit weird, they mush words together more than we do, i reckon.that sucks about the crappy dinner. i can't wait for your queenstown recap as we are hoping to go there next year on our trip.the pictures are absolutely gorgeous! it is such a beautiful country.thanks for linking up with us!

Wow, those photos are beautiful! And I've always tried to avoid renting cars in places where I have to drive on the other side of the road. But it sounds like New Zealand is one of those places where you need a car.

Definitely think we needed a car, but it was super weird driving on the wrong side of the road at first. I was glad we were able to get an automatic so we didn't have to try to shit gears AND remember to stay left at the same time!

Right? I tried to go in the casino 'cause the BF was already in there & they gave me the 3rd degree since I didn't have my passport. I finally just said, "If you won't let me go in, then you'll have to go drag him out" & they relented.

wow some of those pictures look like they could be art! that looks so beautiful...and WTF on a $25 continental breakfast boo hotel people! i bring protein bars for breakfast because of nonsense like that (london was just as crazy priced)

Yeah, we had stuff for PBJ in the room so I was salty he didn't just say F-it & have sandwiches. But, sigh, I guess if that was our big "fight" of the trip that it wasn't bad at all, but seriously. $50 for breakfast!?

I really hate to be a downer, but seriously, the best two meals we had were buffets, other than 2 tasty breakfasts, which were $20 per person each I could have passed on it all. Save yourself the $ & the disappointment & stop by a grocery store.

OMG this is gorgeous... our 10-year anniversary is next May, and we've said for years that for #10 we want to go somewhere epic. NZ/Australia is in the running, and this post helped bump it up a little closer to the top spot. haha Can't wait to see the rest!